How do you handle appraisal feedback you disagree with?

[Celia24]

I had a 360 work review where all colleagues in the team fed back about me. All of the comments were positive aside from one web developer who said he thinks I don't always have 'confidence' to say no to unreasonable requests from clients. (I'm a PM)

The reality is that I'm firm but fair when it comes to clients. If I think something can and should be done, I'll explore it with the team. If I think something is unreasonable then I tackle that with the client and web developers don't see that side of the conversation to make comments.

What made this worse was my manager then said 'yeah I had a similar thought the other day when you were talking about a task in the group chat'. The reality is that my boss is so hands off he isn't close to any projects but will jump in with his 2 cents without context regularly.

So basically I disagree with the feedback because I'm not afraid to challenge clients when I need to. To have a male colleague question my confidence at the appraisal has bothered me a lot, especially because I'm going for promotion. How do you handle this sort of feedback?

It's bad form in this scenario for the manager to overly focus on the one piece of criticism from what sounds like otherwise glowing feedback

But completely normal, sadly. How many people have had appraisals where their manager spends the first 5 minutes talking about their strengths and the last 55 about their (perceived) weaknesses? I bet most of us have. Even though good practice is to get your staff to play to their strengths as far as possible.

I also don't think the OP betrays a lack of confidence in being concerned about negative feedback affecting her promotion prospects. We also know that women have to be perfect to get promoted, men only have to be good enough (or not even that). However, if her manager is really that crap, I'd be looking for another job where I would be appreciated.

Ask for specific examples of instances where you have given them this impression? What was there about your handling of the situation that made them feel you were presenting as lacking confidence?

Yes, but I don’t see what’s happening here as critical thinking. It’s possible the OP has already gone through the critical thinking and decided she doesn’t agree, or it may be that she hasn’t invested the time in thinking about it but has automatically decided she doesn’t agree. But what’s happening with lots of other posters is that they’re just dismissing it, because it’s one comment out of many. That’s exactly my point - they’re automatically finding it objectionable, and that’s not critical thinking.

If I didn’t receive any developmental / constructive feedback, I would assume it was because nobody really spent the time and effort thinking about my performance; I wouldn’t assume it’s because I’m performing perfectly - nobody does. Not a single person in the world.

I agree. People see areas for development as a negative, they are not, we should all be developing.

the op panicked and wondered if it would damage her ability to move up. Instead of dealing with it constructively, even when the manager agreed, so two folks saying it, she decided noth were wrong, she was right and was worried it would prevent her getting promotion .

when you get a comment like this it’s very valuable. Wanting all positives is immature and unprofessional. Because it’s not about if it’s true or not, it is why does this perception exist. Generally if one person says it, others are thinking it.

so is it she is not communicating well enough with the development team? Should she get the client request, discuss it with the team, understand the pros and cons, agree a path forward then discuss with the client?

having been a pm before, and promoted from that, it’s very easy to agree with the client. It’s less easy to discuss the request internally and push back to the client if required. It’s also very easy to not liaise properly internally and explain your decisions and conversations. But you need to think the team are also clients, they need to be aligned too, you need to bring them on board, not dictate it.

those saying he’s just pissed he’s got mor work are not thinking it through, if you’re up against it already and the manager keeps agreeing more work for you, or changing it, and that makes your work levels stressful or unacceptable, then yes this is not ok.

so it’s not about if he and the manager is right, it’s about why do they think this , what is the impact on the team and how can she improve this.

the fact she was solely focused on promotion, didn’t wish any negative feedback, was unwilling to see if from the point of the developer and explore that, says she’s not ready for promotion.

so she needs to say to her manager, I’ve taken the feedback on board and am grateful for it, my plan to improve this is to communicate on the rationale behind my decisions more to the team, so they and you understand and don’t feel I am just saying yes as the easy route. I will also discuss with them the workload and timing allocated to do work, so that no additional stress is brought to bear and it can be managed well and in the new time frame.

If it was me I’d ignore the comment from the colleague but challenge the boss on their view. Ask them why they think this. Ask for examples and how they would have handled it differently. They probably won’t be able to!